As he drifted into unconsciousness, he thought he heard Susan Hannifin crying out for help from within one of the cages.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
1
Jane checked Trey's pulse. It was weak, but there. He was alive. He'd get through it. She was certain.
She stood up, and went back to the three doors to the Night Cages. "Dr. Hannifin? Susan?"
"Help me! Dear God, somebody help me!" came the scream that was not as loud on Jane's side as it was on Susan's. But Jane found the door, and using some of the tools that Mary Chilmark had left, she managed to pull the door open a quarter inch, and then Susan pushed it on the other side.
Jane held Hannifin close, while the psychiatrist wept against her shirt. "Look, we've got to get out. I'm going to need your help. It's a long way back upstairs."
"There's another way out," Susan said. "From down here, there's an exit that goes out into the residency halls. But…what if the fire…"
“I know you're feeling some form of shock. But it's important. I need your help to get Trey out of here. We have to find one of the other ways."
Finally, Susan Hannifin said, "Please. Please. I don't know."
"Get a grip," Jane said. "No one knows we're way down here. We might as well be buried alive if we can't find the other exit."
"I know," a voice that sounded like a little terrified boy's came from one of the doorways. Doc Chilmark sat there, his knees drawn to his chest. "I know everything about this hospital. Since I was little. I know where every secret room is. I know where every doorway is."
"That guy gives me the creeps," Jane said under her breath. Then, she stood up and went over to make sure Doc Chilmark wasn't going to try anything. When she reached him, he had already bounded his hands up in restraints; and he'd locked hobbles on his ankles. "He said he'd protect me from them," Doc said, pointing with both wrists extended toward Trey. "I know how to get out. I'll take you out. There's nothing but shadows here."
2
The two women lifted Trey up between them, each bearing half his weight on a shoulder. Trey drifted in and out of consciousness, and as they went down one of the tunnels, Trey murmured, "It's all right. It's all right."
Doc Chilmark walked slowly in front of them. Jane retrieved the gun that Bloody Mary had, and kept it pointed at Doc in case he was trying to trick them.
They passed other dark cells and rooms. Jane could not help but glance down them as they went – various cages and cells, and one long room off a tunnel full of metal beds. On the ceiling above, pipes of all shapes and sizes running the length of the tunnel.
When they came near the end of the tunnel, where it veered off to the right and left, Doc kept them moving to the left, back toward the buildings of Darden State rather than away from them.
Finally, they came to a utility room, and within it, metal stairs up a towering stairwell.
A blue light wavered as if it were unstable, near the ceiling above. And at the top step, another door, this one short and wide, and slightly ajar.
3
Jane Laymon, with all her strength, drew Trey up the steps, slowly, painstakingly, until they'd reached the low-doorway at the top. She pushed through it, and drew him out into the gardener's shed, within the residency building. Then, out onto the lawn of Darden State.
The sky, dark with clouds – but rain came from them, rather than more black smoke.
Beautiful rain, Jane thought, as she drew Trey into it.
His eyes opened slightly as he looked up from her lap to the sky.
"It didn't reach us," Jane said. "The fire. It didn't reach us at all."
Trees along the edge of the grounds had been turned gray with ash, but the fire had not crossed the boulevard. The firemen and rescue workers had held it back – and something more, Jane considered, as she looked skyward.
Fate. Or God. Or Luck. Or Chance.
And then she remembered Trey's own phrase: the goodness of life itself.
Behind her, Susan emerged from the doorway, limping slightly,
It was a moment out of time – an uplift from the horrors of the day that they'd experienced. Each of them felt, within that moment, a sense of overcoming the worst that anyone could throw at them. In the next few seconds, that might be gone, without any of them realizing why it had touched them and then passed.
But in its touch – of rising up from the darkness into ordinary daylight, ordinary rain – there was a spark of something that would never leave them even in the worst hours of their existence.
Except for Doc Chilmark.
For the night fears always came back.
Epilogue
1
His first night home after his release from the hospital, Trey lay in bed with his wife, and held her so much that she nearly had to push him away just to breathe.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"It's okay. After what you went through…"
"I want the baby."
"Oh."
"Do you?" he asked.
She nodded. "I guess it just was such a shock to find out. But I do. I'm just scared to have a baby this late. All the things we have to go through, what's going to happen with my work. What'll happen with the other kids, and how old we'll be when the baby's 18, and well, all the stuff you think about."
Trey reached to her and drew her back to him. "I want the baby because I want to know that something good can come into the world," he said. "I want us to be the kinds of parents who raise kids who have purpose. Who get help when they need it. Who allow their kids to be productive and happy. Who protect them when we can."
She kissed him on the neck. "That's why I married you. Because you're a good man."
"There are plenty of good men out there," he whispered.
"None like you," she said.
"There's so much bad in the world," he said. "I don't even like thinking about it. Or our kids – how they'll be affected by it."
"You see too much bad," Carly said.
"I do. Now and then, I do. This family keeps me sane," he said, trying to block out the memory of what he'd seen beneath Darden State. "You make me thing about what's good." He began kissing her, and he never wanted to stop.
2
Quentin "Doc" Chilmark was given a new cage as part of his therapy in Darden State. It was not quite a dog crate, but simply a large box. He slept in it at night, but with all the lights on in his room, which had gotten smaller and had no views at all.
He lay in his straitjacket at night, his eyes open wide, listening to the shadows that came and went, talking of death and of heaven. And sometimes the dead girl came to him, too, and sat with him in the cage and told him that she was happy to have made a friend, because she had been so lonely when she'd been alive.
But sometimes, she didn't come.
Sometimes he felt the crawling fears, moving toward him, coming for him just as he fought off sleep.
Sometimes they spoke with his mother's voice.
3
Within three weeks, much of the underground to Darden State was sealed up. The entrances in various underground buildings were closed off with concrete, and the doorway in the Canteen of Ward D was re-fitted with a reinforced steel door that only opened with specific identification cards in a bar-code-like device. An administrative memo circulated about the need for a cleaning crew to go into the two levels beneath Darden State, clear out any material, as well as to seal rooms individually, particularly the old night cages on the lowest level.
At Darden, a budget was drawn up within six months of meetings of several directors and the Board itself, and so it was put to the state to provide three million dollars for the project to clear out the underground once and for all.
Nothing came of this, and the hospital ran as it always did, and always would.
Above ground, several new patients were admitted; there were staff reassignments; Trey Campbell returned to work once he'd recuperated from his injuries completely; Dr. Susan Hannifin sold a second b
ook about her time at Darden State, called Inside The Night Cage: The American Asylum and the Mind's Secret Places, although she resigned from her position and went into private practice in San Diego; when Trey and Carly Campbell's son was born in the summer, his wife suggested they name the boy "Jim," and Trey felt that was a damn good name if you asked him.
* * *
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Publisher Information
Copyright © 2004, 2012 Douglas Clegg
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ISBN-10:
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About the Author
Douglas Clegg is the award-winning author of more than 25 books, including Afterlife, The Children’s Hour, You Come When I Call You, The Harrow Series, The Criminally Insane Series, Purity and many others.
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Table of Contents
Criminally Insane: The Series
Bad Karma
Douglas Clegg’s eBooks
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Part One
Part Two
Part Three
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Red Angel
Douglas Clegg’s eBooks
Prologue
PART ONE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
PART TWO
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
PART THREE
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Epilogue
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Night Cage
Douglas Clegg’s EBooks
Prologue
PART ONE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
PART TWO
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
PART THREE
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
PART FOUR
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Epilogue
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About the Author
Criminally Insane: The Series (Bad Karma, Red Angel, Night Cage Omnibus) (The Criminally Insane Series) Page 58